>> which brings me to the last subject, what i would call paper preservation discoveries. prior to 1870, before the transition to woodpulp, newspapers were printed on raglinen stock, paper made of linen rags, primarily of the facts of the colonists, what people wore as close.

also shipped sales. these rags were boiled and pulled and ultimately sifted into these sheets of paper. the durability of that paper plays a significant role in their preservation, and that today we can find 250 year old newspapers that are in better condition than, say, last week's "boston globe" which is probably already yellowing and bill. so thanks to the raglinen paper on which they are printed, thanks to the institution that bound them into volumes, we have these wonderful printed accounts of what transpired during the american revolution. what i tend to do is i also look for newspapers that others might consider trash, where they are extremely eat up. they have holes, they've lived a long life, and through fire and flood and war, and so they are torn and tattered a little bit.

i partnered with one of the top paper companies and d.c., the head of conservation in the major museum, to restore these newspapers as close to their original condition as possible. you can do some amazing things with old paper. for instance, a hole at the bottom, completely fill. stains are reduced. these papers can be preserved once again. so at the beginning of the book, i point out that there are no photographs of the american revolution. we have photographs of the civil war and every major war thereafter, but not of the american revolution. i think that plays a large part in making the american revolution unreal to some people. we have beautiful oil paintings. we have caricatures and sometimes cartoonish engravings to picking the events of the american revolution but they are

often greater years after the war ended so they tend to be unrealistic. newspapers were very timely. they printed vivid descriptions of battlefield accounting and what was transpiring throughout the whole course of the war, and very much of these newspapers are the photographs of the war for me. they helped make the american revolution real to me, and my goal with this book was that the newspapers helped make the american revolution real forever. thank you very much. [applause] >> so, a couple things, todd, i want to share a few anecdotes before introduced the panel. on that balcony, the declaration of independence, just a few

weeks after it was passed on july 4. so it took a little while to get up to austin from philadelphia, but it got your. abigail adams was in the crowd in the intersection and wrote to her husband, john, and said, it was crazy. after the declaration was read. everything british was ripped down and burned in the middle of the intersection immediately after the reading, including the unicorn that flank the eastside that was put up in 1881. but immediately it was one of the first few things that was ripped off the symbols of british authority and burned in the middle of the intersection. so a little rambunctious. in boston. it continued to be, but before that in 1770 come on march 5, the boston massacre happened just outside the intersection as well.

something we're very all familiar with and something that bob allison contributed to in the book as well as his own book on that. but another rambunctious event in the city of boston. so just right outside this building itself. now we're going to turn to a panel discussion, which will be in the fashion of question and answer session. this mic in the middle of the aisle here is for you to step up to after questions to the panel. right now going to introduce you to the panelists. so begin with bob allison, he's the chair of the history department at suffolk university just down the street. he's also written several books on boston and the american revolution. most recently, a 2011 book entitled the american revoluti revolution, a concise history. he is the vice president of the cornell society of massachusetts, a trustee of the

uss constitution museum, also on the freedom trail, at a consultant to the commonwealth museum in boston. he also serves the bostonian society and the old state house as a member of our board advisory committee. so with that, bob allison. [applause] >> next we'll move to john bell. john doe is the curator. it's a site dedicated to the history, analysis and unabashed gossip about what started the american revolution in new england. he recently completed a large study on general washington during the siege of boston for the national park service. he has also written about the revolution, the boston massacre, the wave of bankruptcies in 1765 and the towns rowdy celebration. ask him about poker night. that was a crazy event annually.

he has lectured many historical societies -- sites around boston, including this one. john galt. [applause] >> and todd andrlik cup peace among the nations leading authorities on 18th century newspapers as you can no doubt tell. is the one of most significant collections of american revolution era newspapers containing the earliest printed reports of practically every major event and battle from 1773-73. todd andrlik. [applause] >> so we'll open up the question and answer right now spent let me just say that todd has done something extraordinary with this book.

i didn't know anything about -- i got a call a couple years ago from a guy who collects newspapers, and he wanted to do a book. and i said that's great, and what he is done in this book is taken these newspapers, these primary sources, and published them. that in itself isn't unique. those of us were fortunate enough to live in boston or other places that of great research libraries know we can go to the boston public library, go on the website and get a lot of newspapers. podcast taken them to put them into book with put them in the book but then he did something even more fantastic, which is to assemble just about every scholar on the american revolution, and people have a great detailed knowledge of a particular event or place, that is the folks on the parks service curators that are interpreters of different sites who really know the site, or people who know boston in 1775. no one knows boston before the revolution better than john

bell. and all around the country, i think it is todd's, both his passion, his enthusiasm, and his seemingly midwestern innocence that told us inducing polka, and contributing, so you can take this book if you are a teacher or a college professor and your teaching the american revolution, and here you have probably the best account of the battle of utah's brings you will ever find. or any other event in the revolution. so this is the resource for teaching the american revolution i congratulate todd for putting it together. >> i'm not a degreed historian. i play one on tv, but no, it was important to me that the newspapers, the historically supported by the experts, the authorities on the subject matter. and so i drafted 37 top historians to bridge the centuries and kind of hold the hands of the general reader so

that when they are trying to consume 18th century media, which isn't always the easiest thing for us today, they have the experts who can kind of point out certain things that they should be noticing. and keep in mind that these were also the number one propaganda tools of the era. and so they do come with occasional errors and omissions and inaccuracies that the contributors to the book, what they did is they served as referees. they were calling fouls on the errors and omissions and point that out for the modern reader. so these documents alone can be dangerous, but when they're conceptualized by experts, they are a beautiful thing. >> the newspapers of the time or in some way an attempt to bring order to the defense, by showing the side, the view of the side that the newspaper supported. so todd mentioned the riots in

boston before the war, for instance. the newspapers would occasionally report on those but they would also try to downplay the destruction, or would say that the riots were done -- sailors and boys, people who are not respectable citizens of the town. but those newspapers are still very important because they say what the other people -- [inaudible] learned about those events. >> questions? >> so you're describing the meet was lawyerless lean the same way we have kind of left leaning or right-leaning media. i'm wondering if you found any of your research anything at sort of resemble light opinion pieces are calling the way we know today? do you know when?

>> usually page one of the newspapers contained serialized essays that would go on sometimes for multiple issues, where they would provide one perspective of a certain argument, and then sometimes you would also receive in the counter argument immediately following. often in pseudonyms. >> i would say everything was. a lot of the time, there was not really the sense of an impartial journalism, so when you read about an event, usually being prevented from the point of view of a one-sided, todd mentioned earlier the boston tea party account written by -- well, he was about an impartial. it was very much presenting, these people just destroyed hundreds of thousands of modern

dollars worth of property, as being very respectful of private property and putting back that lot and making sure no tea was stolen for selfish reasons. so the valley of impartiality was there but it was seized by both sides, or their own side their own side, because they view themselves as the one who had the affair, complete view of the, realistic view of the event, and the other side is bending all the facts. >> msnbc and fox news today are models of impartiality compared to the revolutionary period. >> but you still have an occasional newspaper titled that they tended to remain neutral. the boston evening post spoke tried to the boston chronicle when it came to boston, a staunch -- he tried to be impartial. he tried to publish both articles on both sides. didn't work. he then became the most, the strongest supporter of the royal

government and was driven out of town. >> on the other side of that, with now is so a different source of media we can to fact check them how often direct lies in order to gain support or to turn people directly to one side or the other? >> well, i mean, you are definitely finding exaggerations, whether it was drastic or not, what i was interested in finding was that a lot of newspaper accounts came with disclaimers pics of the publishers, these printers very much valued reliable sources. and if the source was questionable, they would frequently print that with the article from some sort of disclaimer. >> i remember there was a letter that was published after the

battle of lexington and concord that talks about the british soldiers coming to the parsonage in lexington and rampaging through and killing the barnyard animals. that never happened. there's a letter about the battle of bunker hill that says that general howe, as soon as the soldiers reached charlestown can seldom try tried to desert and run away, and he had to them strung up immediately on greasy. that didn't happen. the potentially propaganda, but todd is right, the printers tried to provide their readers with what they felt was accurate information. it was just that it -- it was as accurate as they listed. and on the fair site, at one point some letters from john adams and benjamin harris, to counter no congress delegates, were sent up to boston they were

brought by a young lawyer who was captured at the bridge got hold of these documents, and they publish them. and the john adams letters were just -- they didn't change anything in them but in the harrison letter, they change it to make it look as if george washington was having an affair with a made in a tavern. so yes, they were both sides were using propaganda within the newspapers. >> interestingly, in the middle of the war i settled upon a few london chronicles that report that george washington had died in battle. normally, these were also kind of the rumor hearsay, and their way of adding disclaimer was to print the more gossipy news from the less credible sources, also on the back of the newspaper. so the one was an eight page newspaper and that news was more commonly found on page eight. >> these are also in competition with each other so they will correct, challenge with each

other say. they knew each other personally so you reduce newspapers, you will find in boston is john maine. this character, each side is going to attack the other one personally, which i guess is fact checking. i fact checking that i wished for by what thomas jefferson said. you can divide a newspaper into four sections. the first section will be truth, psychopath truth, partial truth and lies. he thought the fourth section would be the longest. >> there was a moment in the late 1760s when the printer was so upset at something that had been published in the boston gazette about him that he clubbed jong-il, one of the printers over the head. so it got personal. >> keep in mind get a lot of these news accounts are coming from a private correspondence and eyewitnesses, and after reports of the commanding officers. so when i was also interested in learning from the contextual essays was just how shockingly accurate a lot of these were.

but for one of the more kind of common war propaganda tax was to inflate the numbers of your enemy and deflate your own. >> i had a question kind of along the same lines as an organized effort in propaganda leading up to the world. it occurs to me that it shall occasions he read about certain individuals meeting at print shops, the adams coach at on your blog, this morning, john. so i wonder how prevalent was organized efforts to propagandize the newspapers. then the other side of that, who is financing some of these things? newspapers are pretty obvious, printers are making money but then when things like broadsided monsters but who was funding, was it a super pac from the patriot side that is financing certain broadside, who's paying

the piper in that? >> okay, i'll start with the question of meeting at newspaper offices. this was -- gary mentioned i quoted a little bit of john adams in 1769, in his diary where he spends the evening at the office of the prints up with a grading the boston gazette. samuel adams was there and a man named william davis and possibly james soda. and they were cooking up things for next day's newspaper, essa essays, what adams -- what john adams called occurrences. and i think that might be a reference to an actual, a concerted effort of the boston patriots, or whigs of the time, had done to tell other newspapers in other towns what is like to be living in boston under the occupation of the british army in 1768-1770.

1768-1770. said they would send it would be called the journal of transaction. every week, and this horrible thing happened this week. and oh, this soldier was very bad this week. and oh, here's what's happening with soldiers on trial for this. those were not actually published in the boston paper because and, of course, everybody in boston already knew about that award. those were sent to new york and then from the new york papers they were sent all up and down the coast and eventually they were reprinted in boston. so that was an example of a very definite effort by one side of the political divide to use the power of the press to bring the sympathy of the entire eastern seaboard for boston. let's see, you also talked about who finance debt. well, it looks like william cooper, the boston town clerk, was involved in writing some of

those reports. samuel adams, he was being paid because he was the clerk of the house pixie was actually earning a salary as a politician, rather rare at that time. so in a way the government were supporting the time that went into writing those reports. there is an article by a historian called offers dickerson, a number of decades ago about the control of the boston press during the pre-revolutionary period, and he found in british government archives a letter, the printers of the boston -- they were basically saying, look, you were sending all your money -- a letter to the customs office, using all your money to the boston chronicle, the boston chronicle is now gone out of business so why don't you support us? why don't you give us the stationary contract you have with the boston chronicle printed. why don't you buy our papers, and we will support -- implicit,

we will support your side of the dispute. so again it was another arm of the government supporting this newspaper. and i believe there were also, when ezekiel russel sponsored or put out a magazine called the boston sensor, which was presented the loyalist point of view, i believe he was being supported by some of the rich loyalists in town, who either subsidies or everybody agreed yes, we will by subscription for this magazine. and that will allow somebody to show our side of the dispute. so i hope that answers the question. >> a discussion about the news sources, we get the impression, we think of a newspaper today terms of not only publication house but also his big network

of professionals, syndicates and reporters and things like that. and that impression from impression from what you say that we are talking to the time period just the printers who are relying strictly on whatever sources they can, whether the official government documents or letters are somebody who shows up and says hey, i was there, i can say would happen. is that the correct since? >> a lot of the first colonial newspapers were also printed by postmaster because they had access to the number one news source of the day, the private correspondent. so you do see that a lot. robert, did you -- >> it's pretty much the case. franklin was one of most successful printers in the country, and he became the deputy postmaster. it's something that then carries over into the early republic, when newspapers can travel free through the mail because it was an interest on the part of the

united states government to have information flowing freely and have things picked up from one newspaper to another during the debate over ratifying the constitution in fact, massachusetts is probably known very resistant to the new constitution, the supporters of it in massachusetts happen to control the mail. one of the most influential document was the opposition of the pennsylvania minority to pennsylvania's ratification. this circulated throughout the country except in massachusetts. the post office here held it up because they didn't want this to be entering into political discourse before massachusetts had voted. so controlling the post office and controlling the flow of news is one of the essential things here that this book really helps us to see the connections between the connection between the free flow of information which is something different than the free flow of information today. >> i think that you're right, besides the printers are really weren't other people employed at

these newspapers. there might be gentlemen like the adams cousins coming once or twice a week to make sure that essays look good, but there were no reporters. there were no editors as such. there is one moment in septemb september 1774 when we know the printer of the massachusetts, isaiah thomas, was outside the print shop at the scene of an event of something called the powder alarm in cambridge. we know that not because he came back and file an eyewitness report of what happened, your report, isaiah thomas, no. we know the road because a customs official who was chased by this crowd in cambridge said it was mr. thomas who got been upset at me. the whole notion of journalism was evolving at a time. really, i think in the early republic is the first time i'm

seeing people owning newspapers who are not, who have been trained as printers. i guess maybe joseph greenlee, he's a magistrate, a justice of the peace from rural massachusetts. he comes in boston short before the revolution and he's a partner with isaiah thomas in a magazine. but until that point the magazines, newspapers, everything was really the enterprise of somebody, a printer, a man who have gotten or in a few cases, a woman who'd gotten their fingers dirty putting type in lines and actually working those. it wasn't until the next generation we began to get this other sort of, these other professions of the reporter for the newspaper publisher. who doesn't get his hands dirty but gets all the money. >> just thinking about the differences and similarities

between newspapers then and now, and today i think where this idea of impartiality and so on, and professional journalists. but remember, the fundamental purpose of a newspaper in 1775, and today, is pretty much the same. that is, moneymaking enterprise. know what is going to pay for the church bulletin, but you want someone to buy your newspaper. and one white you do that, if that requires hiring staff, then you do that. if it is a one man operation, you are turning out, that's how you do it. i think we may have an allusion about the press serving some sort of higher purpose. there's nothing wrong with the purpose of making money. i were remind you to buy books when you -- [laughter] >> also, when i say it's the printer, the printer would probably have an advantage of the labor of printers wife, the printers children, apprentices,

maybe a couple journeymajourneyma n. so wasn't a one person operation it was a family, a household operation. >> you will see several women printing during the american revolution, and a lot of times they become printers because a has been or brother passes away and they resume kind of the operation of the print shop. >> yes, the printer of the boston newsletter, which is the only newspaper that keeps going inside boston during the siege, so the patriot army rains outside of boston, food shortages and things, that was being kept up close by margaret draper, who was the widow of the previous printer. spent and benjamin franklin and a number of the printers trained their widows and took over the press. in fact, women remained fairly common and typesetting into the late 19th and early 20th century. it's one of the fields that were still open to women throughout the 19th century.

>> one of the things i always observe was that when we read history prior to our life we always do so with knowledge of what occurred, the war took place, et cetera. and yet if you talk to let's say someone who was alive during world war ii, before pearl harbor we didn't know the united states would enter or not. so you can buy speaking with an older person get a perspective you would have on your own. and maybe what you think about the newspapers, these newspapers would have that sort perspective. but i was sure he is not from the lead articles about the battles, et cetera, but from the ancillary articles me was happening in the town, the current have many events, et cetera, how those might illuminate your understanding of events that we read about in history today. >> it's actually one of my favorite assignments is to have students find a newspaper from any period and just read through

it to see what was the news. and it's usually not the front page article but it's the smaller stories or the ads that are really eliminating. i always find reshoring to reduce papers from 100 years ago, 50 years ago, 200 your to go because there was just as much the gravity and mayhem than come even sometimes more and horrible crimes and other things going on. and you're right, that we get a sense of this world and the everyday world of people from reading these newspapers. the other great thing for anyone studying history is to read something and not know the outcome. the person writing this newspaper doesn't know that there's going to be a war for independence, or the united states is going to win the war, george washington is going to become president. so you drop your knowledge of what happened and you suspend that, and you're just immersed in this world. it makes these terrific tools for teaching and understanding history. you're right, you do get this

different perspective of not knowing everything that has happened since. >> you don't even know what's going to happen the next week, and you can see that some people don't care. they just want to sell you whatever. it is, it's a wonderful way, reading a full newspaper of immersing yourself in the life of a particular moment. .. >> you have here this unique kind of juxtaposition with news of the sons of liberty, the organization established to fight the tyranny and the potential enslavement of the

colonists alongside an advertisement for the sale of an indintured servant. -- indentured servant. you get a lot of that in the book, by the way, because these newspapers are presented in a fashion where you are allowed to kind of wander and discover and become your own historian or, where you can find other interesting tidbits along separate lines of the featured news of the day. >> and because the newspapers were so short, have everything compressed on the same page. you'd have a runaway slave advertisement next for an advertisement for the latest imported china next to an essay about the political thing next to -- they could get really personal in some of these newspaper essays, some nasty thing back and forth we can't care about these days but, obviously, very important back then. >> maybe another thing we don't

care about is nasty gossip today -- >> i care. [laughter] >> we'll talk to you afterwards. >> some of these exchanges, they are very reminiscent of online exchanges where you have two people, anonymous, just sniping at each other for weeks on end. one newspaper and then the opposing newspaper three days later, and he says this, well -- and so it always strikes me, it's so similar. i think, okay, these days we think it's the anonymity that allows this, the, you know, people spew back these answers so quickly because they're not thinking. well, back then they had three days to think, and they knew exactly who the other guy was because it was of a town of 15,000 and still decided, okay, i don't like his politics, i'm going to talk about his illegitimate child. [laughter]

>> [inaudible] >> are the newspapers terribly expensive, and then what would be the most prized possession in your collection regardless of any fee you may have paid, and then what are you hoping to acquire? what's the treasure you don't have in your collection at this time? >> hmm. well, newspapers range in value based on a number of factors; condition, timeliness of the news, the milestone that is being covered in that particular issue whether it's an american issue or a british issue, so a variety of factors. they range anywhere from, you know, tens of dollars to tens of thousands of dollars depending on all those criteria. the kind of most coveted newspaper i would think to many, although that's subjective, is the very first american printing in a newspaper of the

declaration of independence which is the july 6, 1776,ish i so of the -- issue of the pennsylvania evening post. so that is, obviously, very desirable. >> do you have it? >> no. [laughter] >> do you want it? [laughter] >> the american revolution center cans going to be building -- which is going to be building the first museum, that's one of their prized artifacts. >> you talk a lot about all the different sources, and i just wanted to know where did they get a lot of these sources? were they being sent in? were they just rifling through people's mail? how did they get these documents that were then put in the newspapers in. >> want to take that one? >> i get the sense when we talk about an extract from a letter from a gentleman these were private letters, but the gentleman be had been probably gone to the newspaper or to a

tavern to share the use -- the news from his cousin or whatever with the other business people in the town. and so in a way it was, it wasn't that they were rifling through the mail except in the case, for instance, of that john adams and benjamin harrison where they were capturing the mail. it was more or -- and there are other examples of that in wartime, but it was more that a gentleman was sharing the news he had which, of course, made him more important, and he would have liked it with the printer. and that leads to some interesting results. for instance, we have more details about the battle of lexington and concord in the pennsylvania press than necessarily in the massachusetts press because gentlemen were sending off details that they knew about, and there was no pressure to keep some of these details secret because there was a war on. so the pennsylvania press talked about paul revere, and the

massachusetts press does not. >> i had the opportunity to interview on video several of the contributors to the book, and i asked one of them that same question. dennis conrad. and he pointed to a manuscript letter that he had come across where in the margin it said print this, print this, print this. as to suggest exactly what the author of that letter wanted to be printed in the newspaper. >> i was just wondering since the topic of your collection came up how your collection of silence do-good letters is coming. do you have all the original -- >> no, those would be very desirable, but those are earlier and outside kind of my specialty or out of focus.

>> oh. i thought they said as early as the 15th century. >> but those are not as in depth or not in the quantity that is the american revolution era. >> but you'd still buy them, right? >> oh, sure. >> does everyone know the silas dogood ones? do you want to reveal a secret? >> so, benjamin franklin, when he was of an apprentice in his brother's print shop here in boston just up the street apparently, you know, the relationship between the brothers wasn't strong, and the older brother didn't want benjamin to really have a role beyond his apprenticeship, and benjamin was a up and coming writer and contributed some pieces that he wrote and slid under the door to the print shop at night under the pseudonym silence dogood. and when his brother discovered those very much fell in love

with the writing and printed them under the pen name silence dogood. >> interesting. this was during the smallpox epidemic in boston, and the foremost advocate of inoculation for smallpox was cotton mather. and the franklins had started the newspaper as a way of attacking the whole idea of inoculation. and he pointed out the mathers were the same people that wanted us to execute quakers, and now they want us to inject ourselves for smallpox. so the newspaper is attacking the mathers, particularly cotton mather, calling him a dung hill cock and a babb poop and other things you -- babb boon and ore things you wouldn't find in a newspaper today. [laughter] and under this torrent of abuse, mathers' daughter died, and he wrote a sermon and preached the sermon at her funeral on the

dignity of sigh tense under attack. -- silence under attack. his most famous presentation was -- [inaudible] everyone knew silence dogood meant cotton mather. and, in fact, the first of the letters, silence dogood tribes herself the middle-aged widow of a clergyman and being a great lover of her country and very adealt at pointing out the faults of others and other characteristics, i think people knew that mather was the target. and franklin was a brilliant writer and a brilliant satirist, and here at the age of 16 he was showing this great tendency, something, incidentally, which did not stand him in good ted with his brother. -- stead with his brother. i don't know if any of you have a smarter younger brother -- some of us may be the smarter younger brother, so we can see this from both sides. [laughter] but i look forward to the next edition of dogood letters and

1720 stuff after the success of reporting the revolutionary war. >> if it's all right, i'd like to backtrack just one moment and ask for your commentary on the role of local newspapers during the battle of lexington and concord or shortly thereafter and how you had kind of briefly mentioned how the boston newsletter was the only newspaper to continue it coverage through that. so what very much was the atmosphere like for the printers on the verge of war and just after the war starts? >> well, all the -- massachusetts had printers in boston and in a couple of the port towns to the north, salem, newport. and when the war started, it was -- i think there were leaks from the british government that they were telling general gauge, the royal governor, to start

cracking down. and the printers, the most radical printers, eads and fill and isiah thomas got tear presses out of boston just a few days in early april 775, and eads snuck out around the same time. isiah thomas snuck out on the day of the battle of lexington and con sort crossing the -- concord crossing the ferry. so they were outside of boston as the siege began, and today had their presses outside of boston. so they quickly set up their presses in watertown and worcester in order to serve the patriot cause. and another set of printer ors came down from salem and renamed their up newspaper the independt chronicle to, again, support the patriot cause. one of the ways they supported the patriot cause, they printed reports for the massachusetts government talking about how awful this british attack on

concord had been and how many, how they had fired without provocation on these soldiers or these farmers lined up in lexington and how they had attacked houses on the afternoon of that day. all -- a copy of the newspaper with this report and this version of the battle of lexington and concord, the provincial congress commissioned a ship from salem to carry this across to london. and the ship sailed in ballast which meant it didn't have any cargo. they didn't stop to put in any cargo. the entire voyage was being paid for by the new patriot massachusetts government in order to get their version of what was happening to london first. and it worked, because general gauge had sent out his report, but he had sent it out on a slow boat that went to new york and

then across to london. so the london government, you can see this in the london chronicle that todd has in the book, is waiting and waiting for the or official report -- the official report, the report they think is more credible. meanwhile, the entire capital is talking about what the massachusetts government has said. over time there's a bit of --, it's tough for some of these printers because it's wartime. and at one point isiah thomas and his apprentices are actually, todd talked about the paper. the printers would ask people, scribers to bring in their old rags in order to send it to the paper makers to be recycled into paper. at one point thomas and his apprentices were sleeping on these piles because they didn't have beds during the war. so, and meanwhile we talked

about inside boston. on the other side, most of the printers shut down and only margaret draper and her journeyman, john howe, kept the boston newsletter running x. the pages are getting smaller, and the type is not quite so good, and, um, it's becoming irregular, but they did their best. is so both sides were trying to support their side of the war. they were part of the overall political effort of the conflict. >> and an interesting observation that i made in the production of this book was that the quality of the american newspapers kind of deteriorates, the quality of the paper that the newspapers were printed on tends to deteriorate or seems of significantly less quality in the middle of the war. and so if you flip through the book and you look just at the american newspapers, you can see in 1777 through about 1780 the quality of the paper is less

than you would find before the war starts and at the end of the war. but to your point about the fast be ship, another interesting tidbit that i read in a 1766 london chronicle was the, it's the issue in which they announce the repeal of the stamp act. and one of the ways that the stamp act -- one of the causes of the repeal of the stamp act is the boycott of british goods. and what that did is, in essence, it made the london merchants become american lobbyists, lobbying parliament for the repeal of the act. and so you read in the london chronicle how the london merchants were celebrating and how as soon as the doors to parliament opened, the london merchants had a commissioned ship, a light, fast ship ready to speed across the atlantic and tell the americans all of their customers that, good news, you know? [laughter] >> you can stop boycotting us. >> exactly.

>> there was, there was after thes boston massacre there was a brief discussion in the boston town meeting, should we send a captain, a ship's captain, bostonian said i will carry this report to london. and the boston town meeting discussed this, and it was a good yankee town meeting, and they decided they couldn't afford it, so they didn't put their money toward that. and the royal government actually sent their own report faster. so when 1775 came around, i think that's one reason why the massachusetts government was quite willing to spend that money. because they knew that they could get scooped if they didn't. >> [inaudible] we'll continue questions downstairs with signing some copies of the books and certainly purchasing some copies of the book, right? so let's continue down stairs and ask more questions for the

author and panelists, bob, john and todd. >> thank you. >> thank you. [applause] >> curator and publisher of rag linen.com, a web site for historic newspapers. >> we're here with photographer jim wallace, author of "courage of the moment." mr. wallace, why did you select these certain photos if your book? >> guest: these photographs were all taken when i was in chapel hill as a student working for the student newspaper, the daily tarheel. and the civil rights movement at that time was working towards getting a public accommodations law that eventually came apart in 1964. the student newspaper supported the marchers. we had some black students in

chapel hill at that time and felt that if they couldn't eat in the same restaurants with all the rest of us, that budget right. and so all of these photographs were taken initially for either the student newspaper or for i served as a string err for some of the -- stringer for some of the local wire services and what not. today in publishing the book one of the purposes was to let some of today's generation who still live in chapel hill and are descendants from the people in photographs know and understand what their parents and grandparents did so that they can enjoy the same freedoms that in some manner they take for granted often today to be able to go into a lunch counter or wherever. >> host: so 1961-1964, and i'm

guessing you can speak to the majority of these and you can recall the moment? we're looking at this one right here, group of folks in front of a merchant's association. >> guest: after having picketed for a number of months, they decided it was time to hold some sit-ins. and rather than pick an individual merchant, service this was of in the summer -- this was of in in the summer, they picked the merchant association which was like the chamber of commerce, that way hoping to be able to influence more. >> host: we're looking at another protest here. looks like it's in front of a, an old -- a convenience store, clarence's convenience store. >> guest: actually, it's clarence's bar and grill. >> host: clarence's bar and grill, excuse me. >> guest: which was one to have segregated establishments on the main street of chapel hill, franklin street. and it was right next to the trailways bus depot which was

also still e selling regrated at -- segregated at that time. >> host: talk about another general b ration looking at these photos. do you stay in touch with the folks at the moment? >> guest: um, there was a long time when i was working here in washington, and i was at the smithsonian for 29 years, and it was till after i retired that we put these photographs together, and together with -- [inaudible] who wrote the text we did the book. >> host: one more photo. to the right here is a gentleman wearing a sign "i'm running for governor of alabama." >> guest: taking on constitution avenue during the march on washington when the crowd that had massed at the washington monument was walking up to the lincoln memorial to hear

dr. king's speech and the speeches by others. >> host: we're speaking with jim wallace, photographer, and he has put together this book, "courage of the moment. the civil rights struggle 1961-1964." thanks so much. >> guest: thank you. >> here's a look at some books that are being published this week.

>> look or for these titles in bookstores this coming week and watch for authors in the near future on booktv and on booktv.org. >> if you want to convert people, you've got to, first of all, persuade them that their soul is in dire danger, headed for the ultimate bonfire on the other side of existence. and for that you need to label them follow orers of the definitely -- followers of the

devil, satan. diabolical human beings. so they look for the devil and look among the deities, a very complex religion. very elaborate, very well structured, and they looked among the deities, and they found be issue, the deity called issue. who's issue? i often refer to issue as the imminent -- [inaudible] of the human condition. why do i call him that? issue is an unpredictable spirit. issue exists to teach humanity, but there's always more than one side to an issue. more than one face to any reality. teaches you beware of appearances.

the best laid plans of mice and men, etc., issue is the embodiment of the lesson gained by such things. and when you teach humanity about the folly in -- [inaudible] or being dogmatic about any issue, it tends to do it in a rather painful way, you know, hike a good teacher armed with a cane, symbolic cane for adults who haven't learned the wisdom of looking at both sides of a question. and his places are the crossroads where, of course, which is the place where human beings get confused. which road do you take at a crossroads? issue's so mischievous that in the overall pantheon he's not allowed in the house. his place is always at the doorstep because issue in the house is just too temperamental. and before you do anything in

your religion, before you worship even any of the deities, you make sure you set aside a morsel for issue. issue is really the messenger of the deities. he can deliver the message strict, he's always truthful, but he may deliver anytime -- deliver it in a way that makes you misinterpret the message. so when the missionaries came and looked at this among the other deities, the god of lightning, the good of rivers, the god of purity, the god of war, the god of the moist element, et, et, they said, issue, that's the answer. he, the mischievous upsets human plans. that's the devil. and so issue became for christians the devil, satan. and even in the interpretation, translation of the bible, each time you hear of the devil,

satan, it is issue. but issue's anything but evil. that is the truth. on the contrary, you will find a symbol of issue in the -- [inaudible] because it is he who helps the interpret the -- [inaudible] the scriptures, the compendium of your wisdom even from ecology, all the wisdom is bound up in the verses of -- [inaudible] whose verses the diviner recites as he divines for human beings. so issue's anything but the devil. but today it is very painful to find countrymen and women referring to issue as the devil. by contrast, look at what happened to issue when he moved with slaves to latin america.

[inaudible] arrived with the knowledge that issue was feared by the christian missionaries. the slaves adopted issue as their patron deity. just to scare the christians who wanted them to convert. issue became the paramount symbol of resistance in latin america and the americas. in fact, it went beyond that. in some parts of brazil, for instance, you find that issue has even been elevated to the supreme deity simply because that was a symbol that was their protagonist for freedom. as we find the transposition of deities across the atlantic not in -- [inaudible] became not only the symbol of resistance in the new world, but the supreme deity in certain

parts of brazil, like brasilia, for instance. on the country if you go to b airks r which is the hotland in brazil and you go to a shrine, the hierarchy is quite plain. but in certain other parts issue became the supreme deity. now, consider today -- now, this was the history of the missionaries in africa, and this goes back a couple of centuries -- now, imagine that today to be a follower of the religion is virtually to earn the death sentence in certain parts of nigeria. christians also earn the death sentence in certain parts of nigeria. and, of course, a lot of christians respond in kind and

set upon their muslim colleagues usually in reprisal. but the level of intolerance based on ignorance has reached such a pitch that you open the papers anytime today in nigeria, you find that a church has just been burned down, worshipers have been machine gunned, a mosque has just been burned down, worshipers bombed out of existence. because, you see, even within the muslim religion there are different grades of purity. one side considers the other side not sufficiently pure. and, therefore, deserving of what i call terminal censorship. of the knew gene institution, however -- knew gene institution, our, is more complicated as it is, in fact, in other societies. there's never one single issue that leads to